


ashes of a secret heart

by coffeesomemore



Category: Bomb Girls
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-30
Updated: 2012-08-30
Packaged: 2017-11-13 04:48:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/499646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeesomemore/pseuds/coffeesomemore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>future fic, some time after Kate's return. Betty reaches for equilibrium, Gladys reaches for understanding, Kate reaches for-- "These days, Kate Andrews puts her faith in people like Gladys Witham." Kate/Gladys, past Kate/Betty, gentle angst with some hope</p>
            </blockquote>





	ashes of a secret heart

**Author's Note:**

> title from Laura Veirs, "July Flame"

It’s funny how Gladys has to follow a lot of rules but sometimes she acts like no rules exist at all.

 

Well, it’s not really funny. Just, some of the girls think it’s funny. Betty likes to mock her with poor little rich girl, even if the sting went away after the first few times (but lately Betty doesn’t speak to Gladys at all). It’s just—it’s funny, how that works.

 

(Kate doesn’t think it’s funny. Kate thinks it’s a little sad. She knows what happens when girls rebel too openly. Gladys is lovely, Gladys wouldn’t survive the outcome, and Gladys knows that. So Kate understands.)

 

(Kate’s a quick learner.)

 

-

 

It’s just

 

Whenever she sees

 

The thing is, Betty thought she’d be better than this. She should be stronger, somehow. But she wakes up every day feeling like she has the flu, with aching eyes and a dry mouth (it feels like she hasn’t eaten in days, it feels like a giant cotton wad in her throat, it feels like her heart )

 

The factory air scrapes the inside of her lungs and she’s always one second too fast or too slow on the line. It’s not a problem, or anything, because  _come on_ , she’s not about to go to pieces, but sometimes

 

Betty stares straight at the crate in front of her and ignores the gossip happening two girls over. She steadies the crate with one hand. She pours perfectly measured volumes of amatol into the casings.

 

She’s not that kind of girl, and she never has been. It’s just some traitor seed inside her, which blossoms and grows every time she thinks she’s safe. It reminds her of all the stupid, brainless things she’d ever said when she wasn’t paying attention. (Stupid, stupid, stupid, it repeats in her subconscious, chanting in time to her arms as she stuffs cordite. Freak, freak, freak.)

 

It’s just this, okay? That traitor seed’s always been there, telling her  _nobody wants to be like her_ , and sure it smarts whenever she starts getting grand ideas that she’s normal, but

 

Look, Betty’s figured herself out all by herself, nobody needed to help with her that, and that’s all swell, but she’d never considered the idea that maybe just nobody  _wants_  her, okay?

 

(Kate would tell her that that’s not true, that one day soon everyone’s going to see Betty like—Betty lets herself think that far, and then she has to step away from the floor for a few and maybe she’ll tell herself to hold it together for once because the boys need her to. Everyone else seems to be doing all right still. The war’s just been going on for too long, is all.)

 

-

 

Gladys is the most glamorous woman that Kate’s ever met in person. Not that Kate is ever really star-struck, but this is the closest she comes. There’s something very earnestly noble about Gladys. It shines through her prettiest dresses and nicest jewelry. It glows right through her turban and factory shoes.

 

Gladys marched up to Marco once, at the Sandy Shore, and just slapped him across the face and then started dancing with a Marine to make her escape. “Well, I couldn’t hit him at the factory,” was all she’d said to Kate in the powder room.

 

“Wow, you’re ultra-keen on the violence when Mister Fiancé isn’t around, aren’t you?” Betty asked.

 

Kate watched Gladys purse her lips in the mirror. Gladys had so many different shades of lipstick and nail lacquer to match. Watching her was like peeking in on a new world. A perfumed, brightly colored, strangely comfortable world. Gladys said, “I’m not sure what you mean.”

 

“I’ve just been noticing your aggression, lately,” said Betty. “Careful you don’t get a reputation you don’t want.”

 

“Betty, please,” Kate said, but it was too late and the spell was broken.

 

Gladys frowned and shook her head. “Not that I care in particular, but next to you I don’t worry about that so much.” She left a gust of sweet-sharp smell in her wake as she stalked away.

 

“What did she mean?” Kate asked Betty.

 

Betty took a moment to look back at Kate, and she answered, “Nothing. She’s just talking like a princess. Don’t worry your pretty voice about it.”

 

This happened before—before. Things changed, but Kate still thinks that’s the worst Gladys has ever said to any of the girls without cause, which—

 

Gladys leans over the conveyor belt and smiles across Edith and Mary right at Kate. Something secret and thrilling stirs inside Kate’s chest, curls up beneath her ribs and vibrates through down to her fingertips. Kate’s a quick learner. She knows exactly what to call this.

 

(She’ll never let herself say it out loud, because of rules, and she understands rules, rules like  _we can never been seen, never_ and  _we said we’d be honest so this is it: I’m not promising you anything and I never will_. Kate doesn’t like them but she knows what’s at stake, and when Gladys smiles at her from across the floor or lets her coax her away from a fight by shyly weaving their fingers together—it wouldn’t be enough, except it’s Gladys.)

 

-

 

The exact words Lorna used were: “Limit your visibility.”

 

Betty almost said, “Yeah, tell it to the chaplain,” but it was Lorna, and she was implicating Kate.

 

Now, Betty can’t even look at Kate without going to pieces, which is just stupid because it means she has to watch herself, make sure she doesn’t accidentally sub in on Kate’s line or

 

It’s so unfair she could scream. But then, life’s unfair, and Betty doesn’t know what to do with that fact, so she keeps her head down and works til her whole body aches, til her head is filled with how exhausted she is.

 

-

 

Sometimes a letter from James arrives.

 

Gladys talks herself in circles of guilt and validation (because James is in Europe and he loves her but he is also in Europe with European women with beautiful accents but he loves her and she loves him, she does, but he is just so far and this means nothing, this is like Hazel McDougall, but he’s fighting in a  _war_...)

 

Kate waits, shoves her hands deep in the pockets of her cardigan and wanders off slowly during lunch to smoke with Betty and a few other girls. Kate understands.

 

Despite the bruises and scars and nightmares, she still believes in God, in Jesus, in the purity of His love. But that’s belief. These days, Kate Andrews puts her faith in people like Gladys Witham. Betty catches her eye during the smoke breaks and Kate remembers once having so much faith in Betty that she thought she’d burst from it. Sometimes it’s almost like she still might.

 

Eventually, Gladys will come out on a certain lunch break. She will stand by Kate and without speaking Kate will pass her a half-finished gasper. Gladys will take it with stiff fingers. Gladys holds cigarettes between her thumb and index finger, about a foot away from her body, like they’re rabid animals. The sight of her trying to hold down even half a Lucky Strike will make Kate smile so wide her lips crack in the dry air.

 

Gladys is the one who showed her how to take what she wants. Gladys taught her not to doubt what she thinks she deserves. Kate is learning on her own that sometimes she has to wait to get anything close to what she wants.

 

Faith in Gladys is like faith in the Prodigal Son. Kate keeps telling herself that Gladys will come back, and every time she returns it’s a giddy rush like being drunk and Kate has never laughed so freely, so full of relief in her life.

 

-

 

“What happens,” Kate once asked Leon, “if say a sax player is cool with his band and plays very well and has a good racket going, but he’s been learning—I don’t know, the violin on the side, and he wants to see if he can make it in like a string quartet or something but he’s not sure if it’ll be as good as playing sax in a band. But he knows that if he does hack it, he’ll like it so much more than being a sax player.”

 

Leon blinked. “Are you talking hypothetical or is this really happening?”

 

“Both,” Kate said.

 

Leon laughed deep and comforting. Sweat glistened on his head. It was close and hot in the club, but Kate couldn’t talk to him about this at the factory, so.

 

“What you’re asking is what should this man do, not what happens. It’s his choice to make.”

 

“Well, yes, that is more like it.”

 

“I know nothing about string quartets. Me, I’d rather stay with the band.”

 

“But what if it’s like a jazzy string quartet. Like what you play, only, I don’t know, gussied up a little with bowties or something. The type that would play here on a quiet night.”

 

Leon wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and peered at Kate from under his wrist. “Are we still talking about sax players and string quartets?”

 

Kate froze for a second. Leon passed her his beer, and she took a sip to buy time. It trickled fizzy and bitter down her throat. “I guess not,” she said awkwardly. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t bother you with this. It’s just a little silly problem.”

 

“Hey,” Leon said, putting out a hand. “I just thought I saw that you’re looking for excuses for the sax player to jump ship. Wasn’t sure if you had a different-colored horse in this race.”

 

“Something like that,” Kate said, and she thought of Gladys. Gladys with her set mouth and her angry eyes, standing across the street from Kate as Kate sang with her heart in her throat. Gladys, who stood patiently week after week, the same expression on her face, until one day Kate finally had the courage to board the train back to Toronto with her. Dark horse was the perfect way to describe her.

 

-

 

Sometimes, Gladys takes them out, just the two of them. A treat. It’s a clean slate, a re-establishment of—well, of something. Kate used to think of friendship, but lately she’s not sure.

 

This Saturday, Gladys drives an old car of her father’s, and they lurch, giggling and clutching at each other, down to the river, where Kate lays out a blanket and Gladys sets up a picnic.

 

The air is cold, damp, and the sunlight is weak, and lunch is only sample rations from Witham’s (“Couldn’t stand my mother making up an entire banquet,” Gladys said, huffing, “these were the only things that were ready to eat. I had to get out of there.”) Kate thinks it’s the most divine afternoon she’s ever had. Even though the blanket is huge, they huddle together in the middle, guarding their hands from the cold.

 

“I should have been born a boy,” Gladys says. She gets some chicken paté on her fingers and licks it off to make a point. It’s cute and funny, and oh, Kate wants to kiss her, wants to touch those rouged lips and that soft hair. She doesn’t. She waits. “Not that I want to be a boy, not that  _I_  would be any different, but—my father would like it more. He doesn’t know what to do with me. He shouldn’t have to, I’m a grown woman. Still—” Gladys breaks off and sighs. “Still, you know?”

 

Kate feels like there’s a thread in her body that stretches from her stomach to her throat. She feels like Gladys’s voice tugs the thread so sharply tears gather behind her eyes and she fights hard to hide it.  Kate’s never been good at lying with her face. Stroking her thumb along Gladys’s forearm, she says, “I understand.”

 

Gladys swallows and looks her in the eye. “Don’t you think it would be easier? Life? Love? If I were a man?”

 

Gladys never wavers. Kate’s an awful nervy wreck but Gladys just carries it through, so Kate  _tries_  and she holds Gladys’s gaze as long as she can while her heart threatens to explode. She presses her hands into her lap. No fidgeting. Clear eyes. _I know what it’s like, to know it’s all your fault that bad things happen_ , she desperately wants to say (but that’s not it, that’s not it at all). “I think it’s just hard. That’s what all singers sing about. How nothing is easy. I think, if it comes too easy then it falls apart just as easily.”

 

Gladys smiles. “You’re sweet, Kate,” and Kate does look away from her then. She leans in and closes her eyes as Gladys kisses her back.


End file.
